China never really took the GCC region very seriously in the economic sense previously. It simply never considered the Middle East to be one of its strategic and important business and economic partners. The international firm Ernst & Young states that Western Europe and North America still account for most of investments in the Middle East region. However that is quickly changing.

There are serious reasons to think that this is the beginning of something really big. Global consultants McKinsey and Company predicts that bilateral trade between China and the Middle East will climb sharply to reach somewhere between $350 billion to $500 billion by the year 2020. Massive investments are being made by large Chinese companies focusing on large infrastructure projects rather than only small trade opportunities. The GCC being the economic heart of the Middle East region shows even more significant numbers.

Many western analysts like to see an ulterior motive in Chinese investment around the world but Beijing’s strategy is quite simple: it is interested in commercial and economically strategic considerations alone. The big change will come when Gulf investment funds begin to invest in China. The country’s maturing economy has created a large number of huge companies with a global reach that could be prime targets for sovereign wealth funds.

Economic relations are beginning to move beyond oil for manufactured goods formula often portrayed in the media, as Chinese firms source more and more aluminum, petrochemicals and plastics from the region. Beijing has even ventured into Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, so it will be interesting to see whether it continues to carve out a political role for itself, when it has opted not to do so elsewhere in the world.